Week 13 – Final week of class, GDW presentations!

                For this week, my group and I have been working very hard on getting all our GDW requirements ready for presentations today. I still haven’t slept since Sunday night, so I’ve been very tired for the most part of the day. We managed to finish the entire GDW portion in time, and I feel that we should be getting higher marks this time, as our game is pretty complete with all requirements met.

Zombies leaning against a wall

                I have added several zombie models into the second last room, due to the fact that my group couldn’t get skeletal animation working, so we had to put the zombies in as corpses. A slight problem was that the pivot point of the model wasn’t in the same position of the node, so there was plenty of trial and error in order to get it working properly. In the end, I put in 9 zombies, 3 of which are laying down in the second last room, and 6 of which are leaning against the wall in the hallway leading to the final door. I also fixed the final door in the grand room that leads to the exit, which requires the player to have all 4 weapons in the game, 2 swords and 2 hammers. After tweaking around with that code, the player can now collect all 4 weapons to open that door properly. Our programmers also worked on this, in order to ensure that the code works for the player to pick up each of the 4 weapons, as well as for the HUD art to appear in the player inventory section of the screen after picking up a weapon. The weapons will also ‘teleport’ to the corresponding knight statue after being picked up by the player. 

Dead zombies

                That’s all for this week, and this is the last blog of the year for Game Design & Production II! Thanks for reading through all my blog posts!

Week 12 – More GDW progress, working on Bloody Mary

Ghosts found in the bott

                As usual, for the past week, my group and I have been working hard on our GDW game, Bloody Mary. We have added the option to choose between a boy or a girl as the main character, which will eventually affect the sounds that the player’s character makes whenever he/she is hit by a ghost. Also the death sound will be unique to whichever gender the player picks. This is supposed to satisfy part 3 of prototype 3 for this course, as the player is allowed to use expression as a reward. The player can choose the gender of the character that they want to play as, and he/she is able to freely choose.  I also created a bottleneck in my GDW game, which consists of 3 ghosts in the second last room, the one right before the exit. This bottleneck was very hard at first because I had put 4 ghosts inside the room, and the speed of the ghosts were also higher than before, so there was a very likely chance that the player would not be able to survive this bottleneck and make it to the exit.

Male and female versions of the main character

I had also worked on fixing the rotations for all the doors in our level, so that they rotate properly, and in the proper direction, especially with all the crates added into the level as a puzzle. Sometimes, the door’s rotation was counter-clockwise, so when the player opens the door, it would hit the crate and send it flying away. But by changing the rotation to clockwise, the problem is solved, and the player must move the crate first before entering the room, even if they attempt to open the door. Some of these rooms that have a crate blocking its door have health or oil power-ups inside them, rewarding the player if they can ‘solve’ the puzzle.

One of the fixed doors

That’s all for this week, stay tuned for more updates next week, the last week of class!

Week 11 – Ubisoft Game Lab Competition, resource management in games, and more Bloody Mary (our GDW game) progress!

One of the starting zones

                For this week, we were told about the Ubisoft Game Lab Competition 2013, which looks very exciting. It also looks very hard to get qualified for, as only one team per university can participate. During the lectures for this week, we had also learned about resource management, where we were told to include things like resource costs in our GDW games, such as implementing a health system. For our case, the player has a limited amount of health, and can only replenish it by picking up health power ups that are scattered across the level.

Some decorative text found in some of the rooms, left behind by the victims

Another room, showing one of the oil bottle power ups

One of the rooms with a health power up

                This week, our GDW game, Bloody Mary, has had some good progress. We are having much success with collision, where the player can now push around objects in the game, and collide with the walls and other objects (no more running through walls and objects like before). We also had some progress on importing a ghost model with a skeleton and skeletal animation. With some help from our Game Engines professor, we were able to put one of our ghosts into the game. When the game is complete, we should be able to have fully functional ghosts that wander around the level, and will chase the player if he/she gets too close to one of them. The ghosts are able to move through walls and objects, providing a challenge to the player. We are also planning to implement multiple difficulties for the game, ranging from easy, medium, and hard. If the player picks easy, there will be health power ups in every other room, and the other half of the rooms will have oil power ups. Medium difficulty will have half of the amount of health and oil power ups, and hard difficulty will have much few power ups, which makes the game very difficult as the player can only find limited quantities of health and oil power ups.

One of the ghosts for our game

                That’s all for this week, stay tuned for more updates next week!

Week 10 – MIGS, working on our GDW game, and working on Homework 3 – Blind Fighter

One of the 2 starting locations

Oil power up

Blue key to unlock the blue wing

                For the past week, my group and I have been working on homework 3, which was to design and create a sound-based game for blind people. Classes were cancelled for the most part of this week, and in my case, all of my classes except an elective, due to all the professors and the majority of the students being at MIGS. My GDW group and I did not go, so we spent the majority of the week working hard on our GDW game, which has had some good progress so far. Our game is called Bloody Mary, and it is based off of the Bloody Mary curse, where the player travels to Bloody Mary’s world. The player must escape from this world, which is based on the 1800s. The player is limited to using only a lantern, and cannot fight any of the enemies (ghosts for now, may add zombies later). The player wanders around the level, which consists of 3 wings and a couple large neutral rooms, as well as a final room with the exit. The player can collect health and oil power ups, which will restore either health or light to your lantern, which are represented by a health bar at the top left and a lantern at the bottom right corner of the screen. The player also has to pick up keys that will unlock each of the wings, and also a sword and hammer, which will be used to unlock the final door to the exit. We plan to add statues of a knight, and the player must match the corresponding weapon with each statue (such as a sword, hammer, crossbow, and shield), in order to unlock the final door to the exit.

One of the ghosts in the game

Red wing, the last wing in the game

Blue wing, the second wing

For homework 3, we have chosen to make “Blind Fighter”, which is a fighting game that involves the use of sound only, and the player must fight a computer-controlled enemy. Using the right control key starts the tutorial, and the enter key is used to start the game, or progress through the tutorial. The player uses the left shift key to jab, the left control key to punch, and the space bar to block. The player gets to fight 4 different enemies, ranging from fairly easy to very hard. The first enemy doesn’t really move around you, but as you progress, the enemy will actually sidestep and move around you, so you must use the left and right arrow keys to turn around and hit the enemy. The key to winning fights is to combine all your moves, to block the opponent and hit them when their guard is down. The enemy will make different noises depending on their current action as well as their location. The player must listen carefully to these sound cues in order to win the game.

That’s all for this week, stay tuned for more next week!

Week 9 – Learning about puzzles vs. riddles, and remaking Carcassonne in Unity (With a twist!)

                For this week, we had learned about puzzles and the difference between puzzles and riddles. Professor Nacke also brought up solving a Rubik’s cube, which I loved to solve back in high school (usually solving it in less than 20-30 seconds). We also learned about the difficulty increase in puzzles, where puzzles should slowly but surely increase in difficulty.

Score screen when you finish the game

Top-down view of the game (default and only playable view)

                For the past week, my group and I had been busy working on models to be used for our homework 2 assignment, which was to remake a German-style board game as a casual game in Unity. We chose to do the board game Carcassonne, and added a twist to it. It is similar to the original board game, where you start the game off with 2 tiles, and you get to place the next tile, which is randomly generated from a list of possible tiles, wherever you want. There are 4 different color types of tiles, including green (0 points), bronze (1-4 points), silver (5-7 points), and gold (8-14 points) tiles. The goal is to create a path using the road pieces for the ball to travel on. The player will have a certain amount of time to place all the tiles, one by one, and then the gate will open and release the ball. Should the ball roll off the edge, you lose the game and get 0 points. Should the ball end up at the end point’s hole, you will get all the points that were accumulated when the ball rolled over each tile, as is also affected by cities and monasteries, which will give bonuses. After the game ends, it will assign a rank to each player depending on their score, and a score of 0 will result in a rank of peasant. There are other ranks implemented, such as knight, noble, king emperor, and godlike if the player can get enough points.

Close up view of the level (start and end points present, cannot play while in this view)

I had personally created the monastery (basic + upgraded versions) and the huge city (basic + upgraded versions), and also helped with the quarter city and the half city (with their basic and upgraded versions).

                That’s all for this week, stay tuned for more next time!